hey world!! long time no see. getting really behind on my blogging because i spend the majority of my time conjugating verbs/power walking/faithfully searching for under 10 euro meals. sorry fans. at this rate probably won't even have sponsors for this blog til I'm, like, back from my mission :/
that's ok tho cause you win some you lose some AMIRIGHT.

okay so i learned very many a lot of things this week including but not limited to:
-the latin quarter has ZERO burritos (but they do have gluten free crepes) and is apparently named after a dead language and not for the land of salsa. which was probably good for us considering the fact that we have bought mexican food so many times in the past little bit that our waiter literally said SEE U NEXT TIME as we walked out the door. don't worry dad, still immersing myself really well cause we did order our fajitas in french. which for sure cancels out the fact that in addition to the little mexican cafe, yesterday was my third time at chipotle in paris. no comment.

-also a fun fact: i got to see the cafe where rousseau would work and write and philosophize???? as in rousseau who was basically an honorary founding father for the united states of america?! please someone take a moment to appreciate this with me. sam frazier where u at. (#polibye @madelinemcewan)

the first half of this week has been madness with balancing three hours of French class everyday with covering enough ground each day and having the homies from BYU in town for their internship. but somehow within the space of three days i've been to the eiffel tower twice, la louvre also twice, la musée d'orsay, l'arc de triomphe twice, the champs-élysée three times, nine hours of class, notre dame, the catacombs, luxembourg gardens twice, and spent wayyy too much on food. like i went to the grocery store twice today and bought ZERO things because i got anxiety everytime i though about pulling out my wallet :'( but yeah for sure all worth it though (lol guys arc de triomphe is for sure lit btw).

specifically we did walks 3 and 17 which were quite, quite opposite but very interesting.

walk 3: Montparnasse and the Jardin du Luxembourg, we found our dear very American friends laying out on the grass shirtless so there's that. they're a work in progress. um also this place is ENCHANTING. veryyyy different from parks back home in the sense that you are only allowed to step foot on designated grass??? and everyone lounges about and eats Angiono's (or something along those lines) gelato?? which is shaped like roses because of course France wouldn't have normal gelato scoops like the rest of this world? yeah for sure gonna be doing my homework there in the future. it smelled like spring. and lilacs, which madeline is allergic to (fun fact!). ALSO along the way saw the café where Hemmingway would write so that also was quite lit (in only the most literary sense) and also the second lebanese restaurant that dina had dragged us to that day. holla at my favorite palestinian. also her blog is super rad check out http://parisislit.blogspot.fr/ for more perspectives on all the good times here in the city of light!!!!!!!!!

walk 17: okay so La Défense is for sure the French equivalent of TomorrowLand i kid you not. pure madness. we're talking the world's (debatably) largest mosaic which is basically this multicolored cylinders in the middle of an office building which periodically flood with water. also it's like silent cause no streets.... you just metro in. eerie for sure. rainbow fountains, massive malls, a marvel's avengers exposition, the dream business trip destination without a doubt. oh, also micah and i both ripped our pants also on accident so that was a plus for sure. all kinds of hidden treasures on this walk like thumbs and such.

other highlights:
-anneka locking herself in the opera house bathroom
-anneka then buying prada sunglasses to console herself
-anneka having an allergic reaction to france in general while walking the streets


GO TEAM

vendredi (friday) 22 avril: i flew to france and also talked to Elder Bednar in the airport so that rocked. also coughed on micah the entire length of the atlantic ocean so that was a bummer. but we made it!!!!!! and our taxi driver played johnny cash and we were bewildered but it's all good.

lundi (monday) 24 avril: met my cutest host family, madame et monsieur boissy who live in the suburbs (le vésinet) and love michael jackson and feed us ridiculous amount of baguettes and also i think he used to be a concert pianist because he plays the piano for hours every night and it is magnificent.

the rest of the week: we literally just wander around paris and it is magical. so far this week we climbed roughly 3,000 stairs to the top of notre dame up a teeny tiny tower, sprayed ourselves with perfume in chanel, found the US embassy and consulate (my future place of employment), saw the eiffel tower, arc de triomphe, and about 400 other wonderful things.


we have french class (at our school for immigrants) from 9 to noon everyday, which for me consists of two other english speakers (one british and one american), three japanese girls, one from colombia, one from vietnam, one from tonga, one from india, and one from venezuela. and i adore them. and three of them are nuns-in-training and they occasionally bring clementines for everyone for snacks.

after class micah and anneka and i generally find some of the other BYU homies and choose an area of the city to explore that day which has led to discoveries ranging from hidden holocaust memorials (so somber but so, so beautiful) to the only chipotle in france to monet's water lilies to free dance classes to the most charming chapels. also, we saw the lumineers in concert and in the words of both anneka cusick/joe watanabe it was actually LIT. also it resulted in a slightly (actually very) terrifying metro experience but we learned valuable lessons like how to avoid gypsies and to only speak french in public late at night but yeah we can all navigate the parisian metro system far better than the average american teenaged girl now!!! so who needs the patriarchy!!!

basically, the next two months are so will be an absolute dream. i keep finding myself in little sidewalk cafes wondering "how on earth did i go from the BYU testing center to the city of light", and to be perfectly honest i don't believe i'll get over it until i'm on a plane back home.

à bientôt,
reags

ps doctor erickson this includes walks 1 and 5 just to clarify